How to Prevent Plagiarism in Blog Writing

How to prevent plagiarism when writing blog has become a big concern of numerous bloggers. Just copying and pasting on Internet or taking an idea from a book without proper citation can be precarious. However, if you know some tips on avoiding plagiarism, you are able to avoid the situation being involved in this type of trouble.

According to the information we collected and the advice we got from the famous bloggers, we list 8 tips in below to help you get out of this problem and write a more professional blog post. If you are looking for writing tips for better web content, you can refer to this post. Now, go on reading to learn the details to prevent plagiarism in writing.

Tip 1: Have your own idea

A post should have your own idea instead of a collection of other people’s works. You should know what you want to write before you tap the keyboard. Once you got the idea, write an outline of this post and make it clear what you want to express and what information you need to gather. What’s more, it is important to be familiar with your topic. Only if you learn a lot about the subject you want to write and truly understand, you are able to post in your own words.

Tip 2: Paraphrase

Once you start to search sources, you may find some information online or in books that perfectly matches your topic. You must know that you are absolutely not allowed to write the same words with others’ on your blog without a proper quote. However, what you can do is paraphrase. It needs you to understand the information and put it into your own words. Then, reread your post against the sources to ensure you deliver the right massage and there are no others’ words in your post.

Tip 3: Cite Others’ or Your Own Sources

Citing is the most effective way to avoid plagiarism. No matter the sources are others’ or your own, the words and ideas you take from other papers need to be cite. It’s better you can follow document formatting guidelines released by educational institution and note the author’s name, the publication date and other required information to cite those sources. Remember, improper citing can cause plagiarism.

Tip 4: Manage Your Citations

Develop good habits of recording the sources you cite. You can use citation software like Reference Manager to help you do this job. When your citation accumulated to a certain number, you are able to use multiple references to support your point, making it more comprehensive and accurate.

Tip 5: Quote

When you find some good information and you want to quote it into your own post, you need to use the quote exactly the way it appears. No one want to see their works be quoted improperly. Don’t quotes a whole paragraph or over 40 words and don’t copy others’ words without quote, either.

Tip 6: Use plagiarism checkers

Even through you write the whole post by your own, it is possible to have some same words as others people’. To avoid being involved in unnecessary trouble, you can use a plagiarism checker to make it clear that if there are any similar sentences or phrases between your post and other people’s works. If there are, modify your words without changing the meaning.

Tip 7: Screenshot Form and Codes

If you want to refer to a form or some source code from a script, we suggest you screenshot of them and show them in image format. Because forms and codes are difficulty to be paraphrased and most of them can be quite long, they can easily cause the plagiarism. Once they are in image format, Google cannot read their content and the problem is avoided easily. However, don’t put too much screenshot on your blog, because it is bad for SEO and too many images can lower your site’s loading speed.

Tip 8: Ask Others to Review

Sometimes you may read your post for many times and cannot find the mistakes or improper words. Asking one or two of your friends to read your post can help you a lot to improve it. When people read a post for first time, they will go though it with doubt. Therefore, the mistakes escaped from your eyes can be caught by them. Moreover, when you stuck in a place or split hairs over a small matter, they can offer you a new point or a different angle to open your mind.